Story broken because of Crystal Tower quests not showing in MSQ

One of the things I usually like about FFXIV is: You have an MSQ indicator, which discretely guides you to the next main story quest. And if there's a job or role quest you should do, it's announced there, too.

But at one point when playing the game, you're completely lost, unless you do intense research in wikis. This is when "A Time to Every Purpose" appears. You meet Minfilia, but the quest is red, because it says: "In order to progress in the main scenario, you must first complete certain quests in the Crystal Tower series".

It does not say which ones, it does not say where to pick them up. This is the point where everyone who doesn't google in wikis is completely lost. I'd even say this is game breaking. And this is not the quality we're used to see in FFXIV or other Square Enix games.

This is a serious issue, a bug in the main story itself. I could only proceed because I've played it once years to with my main character and I already knew the wikis to dig through. And it still took me a while to click back to "previous quest" several times and check with my in-game journal to find out which quests I already did and where to go next. Other players might just give up completely at that point.

To fix this: Please, just add the mandatory crystal tower quests to the MSQ notification, and the new players (and old players who didn't remember, like me) are happy.

And there's the thing about "Yeah, just accept every purple + quests". In Mor Dhona, almost every of these quests will unlock hard/extreme stuff and fill your quest log with stuff you don't want. If you're not into that, you avoid it. You just can't tell what it is about, until you accept it. It feels really bad to abandon a quest; you even feel like the game will punish you or your FC somehow for that. So you'd rather not accept a purple quest, unless you know that you need to do that for progress in the main story or job/role quests.

[edit] And if you as player finally found out where to continue, you're probably a bit angry because of the time wasted for all that research. So you quickly click through dialogues. At least I did, because my mind was like: get Minfilia's quest soon.

Please, developers, fix this as soon as possible.

While the notification text later could be improved, the game already pointed out the starting point of the Crystal Tower questline to you some time earlier when you were in Mor Dhona, along with (from memory) text highlighting that you would need to complete these quests to progress the MSQ.

As a general rule, do any sidequests marked with a blue "plus" icon.

I started a thread for this (Thread: Icons for "Side quests" that are now MSQ-compulsory) in Forum: User Interface back in 2020 and it still hasn't been addressed.

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Originally Posted by Rongway

Certain side quests that were once optional are now compulsory for continuation of the MSQ, such as

• The quest series for Ifrit (Hard), Garuda (Hard), and Titan (Hard)
• The Crystal Tower quest series
• The quest to unlock the Sunken Temple of Qarn

However, these quests still use the sidequest Q+ icon, which some players do not view as a priority. Inevitably, some people reach an MSQ lock and are told they need to complete some side quest to continue the MSQ, and they may have no idea where to go besides to ask someone.

To avoid this, I submit that it's important we change the icons for supposed "side quests" that are actually required by MSQ to be more conspicuous:

• They should be marked with a blue Meteor+ icon that distinguishes them from true, avoidable sidequests (blue Q+ icon), so that players can see they will eventually be forced to do them.
• In the event a questgiver can offer multiple sidequests, the MSQ-required sidequest should have display priority on the map and over the NPC model.
• As early as when a required sidequest becomes available, or at the latest when the MSQ becomes blocked by it, the quest name and NPC location should become a clickable map link below the Scenario Guide HUD element.

By making these changes, we can save new players a lot of confusion and frustration when they focus exclusively on Meteor quest icons only to find that they cannot continue the MSQ beyond a certain point.

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It reminds you to pick it up and complete it after the 2.0 MSQ is done and explains that it's necessary, and a cutscene shows you where you pick it up from. Then it doesn't let you progress through the final patch quests if you didn't do it.

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

It reminds you to pick it up and complete it after the 2.0 MSQ is done and explains that it's necessary, and a cutscene shows you where you pick it up from. Then it doesn't let you progress through the final patch quests if you didn't do it.

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I might have seen a message at some point that I clicked away (but really I don't remember). For fifty levels long, FFXIV players are kinda "trained" to the fact that they're safe to not miss any story or job related quests, because these always appear in (or near) the MSQ indicator. But not at this very important point. If there's a dialogue and cutscene as you say, players might think: "Nice, that will be in my MSQ indicator anyway, because everything else is".

At this very point, the game breaks with its own behaviour and tradition. And beyond that point this doesn't happen again (if I remember correctly). That's why I consider this to be a story related (or user guidance related) bug that has to be fixed.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

As a general rule, do any sidequests marked with a blue "plus" icon.

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This might be nice, but as I said:

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Originally Posted by Qujah

And there's the thing about "Yeah, just accept every purple + quests". In Mor Dhona, almost every of these quests will unlock hard/extreme stuff and fill your quest log with stuff you don't want. If you're not into that, you avoid it. You just can't tell what it is about, until you accept it. It feels really bad to abandon a quest; you even feel like the game will punish you or your FC somehow for that. So you'd rather not accept a purple quest, unless you know that you need to do that for progress in the main story or job/role quests.

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Qujah

In Mor Dhona, almost every of these quests will unlock hard/extreme stuff

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A lot of "hard", very little extreme. Prettymuch everything at level 50 gets labelled "hard" just for being standard difficulty there, and yes you should be unlocking the optional dungeons so you can run the 50/60/etc roulette and not drag the party into Snowcloak every time.